‘That’s her,’ Davide said.
‘You mean this girl is the same one who was found in Metanopoli a year ago?’ Duca asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What about the other one, the blonde? Do you know her?’
‘No.’
Duca turned to Carrua. ‘Can you send for a bottle of whisky?’ he said, adding, ‘I’ll pay.’ He took Davide by the arm and walked him over to the window.
‘Stay there for a moment, the whisky will be here soon.’ He moved a chair close to him, as if he was an old man. ‘As soon as you don’t feel like standing, sit down.’
‘What brand?’ Carrua asked.
‘The most expensive,’ Duca said.
A half glass of whisky gave Davide’s eyes a less remote expression. ‘Don’t be afraid. That shivering inside will soon pass. Drink some more.’
He drank, too, quite a bit. He might end up weaning the young man off drink, but becoming an alcoholic himself. ‘And now let’s analyse these photos.’ He sat down next to Carrua. In prison you lose your own personality, he realised, you lose warmth, you become frozen, and that was why he had to drink. ‘These photographs were taken by a professional in a studio. Technically they’re perfect, aesthetically a little less so. The photographer hasn’t bothered much with the arrangement of the subject, all he’s interested in is the shutter, the speed, the light. My second observation is how strange it is to do studio photographs, and photographs of this kind, with a Minox. A Rollei or a Contax would have been better, or the usual plate cameras you get in studios. To obtain these photographs, they must have placed the Minox on a tripod, and it’s quite a problem, attaching it to a tripod, you need special nuts and bolts that aren’t easy to get hold of, because people don’t usually need to place a camera weighing fifty grams or a little more on a tripod that weighs fifteen kilos.’
‘When did you study photography?’ Carrua said.
‘I never studied it, I’m only a layman, but I had a friend who was a photographer.’ He looked at Davide, who had sat down and was looking out of the window, with his back to them. ‘My third observation is that the girls are not professional prostitutes used to this kind of work. Look at the poses: as far as looking sexy goes, they don’t know much, especially the blonde. The brunette’s a little better, she has a little more class, but she’s innocent. The blonde, on the other hand, is either very vulgar, or just clumsy.’
Carrua was looking through a dozen photographs as he spoke. ‘A very precise analysis.’
‘The last thing is what you have to think about: What was the purpose of taking more than fifty photographs of this kind? That’s your job. But there’s something even more problematic, or at least something I think is serious.’ He picked up the yellow file again and took out the few sheets of paper it contained. ‘When a girl lies down in a field and slits her wrists, she has to use something sharp to do it with. Then she can do one of two things: if she has a lot of self-control and is very tidy, she puts the sharp object back in her purse, if she’s already in a state of shock, she abandons it, she drops it near her, or else keeps it in her hand. But the officer’s report doesn’t mention any sharp object found near the body. Nor was any such object found in the girl’s purse. It’s unlikely that the girl would slit her wrists with the first sharp thing she finds in the field where she’s hidden herself, for example the lid of a tin can, a thorn, a fragment of glass, but even if we admit that, the pathologist’s report contradicts it: the cuts to the veins are straight and clean. You can’t make a cut like that with a tin can or a piece of glass.’
Carrua looked through the papers in the file. ‘Here it is: “… complete list of what was found in the place where the body of the above-mentioned Alberta Radelli was discovered …” It seems they searched, but didn’t find anything sharp. If it was a small blade it might have got lost in a field.’
They exchanged glances. They knew each other well and couldn’t fool each other. ‘You can’t slander the Metanopoli police like that,’ Duca said. ‘If there’d been something sharp there, even within a radius of thirty metres they would have found it and put it on the list. You don’t have a very high opinion of your fellow officers.’
‘Your father always said that, it offended him.’
They both smiled, wickedly. And then Carrua said, ‘I think you have something else to say.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the contents of the purse.’ He looked towards the window. Davide was there, his back turned. ‘Davide, no need to get up, just tell me how much money you gave the girl that day. Think carefully. Tell us what denominations it was in.’
Davide turned. Compassionately, the whisky had put to sleep the vipers that were poisoning him from inside. ‘Let’s see … They were ten-thousand-lire notes …’
‘How many?’
‘Let’s see … I think two, yes, two, when we were in the Corso Lodi, because she didn’t want to come, she was afraid … Then, by the river, she said she needed fifty thousand lire, and so I gave her another three notes of ten thousand … In my wallet I only keep notes of …’ He suddenly broke off, and slowly turned back to the window.
‘So,’ Duca said to Carrua, ‘when Davide left the girl she had fifty thousand lire in her purse, at least fifty thousand. Now I’ll read you from the list how much there was by the time the police arrived: one ten-thousand-lire note, one thousand-lire note, three hundred-lire coins, two twenty-lire coins, four five-lire coins. If we assume the girl already had the small change before she met Davide, in other words, one thousand three hundred and sixty lire, and that the ten-thousand lire note was one of the five that Davide gave her, there are forty thousand lire missing.’
It was obvious, but Carrua checked the dog-eared sheet of paper all the same. ‘Give me the pathologist’s statement.’ He read it carefully. ‘It says here she can’t have slit her wrists before eight o’clock, but probably after eight thirty.’
Duca looked again towards the window, almost sadly. ‘Davide, don’t get up: What time was it when you left the girl that day?’ He saw immediately that the young man hadn’t understood, he was dazed, but not with whisky. In Metanopoli, when you told the girl to get out of the car, what time was it, more or less?’
Davide didn’t say, ‘Let’s see.’ He said, ‘The sun had set.’
‘Could you still see?’
‘Yes. The sun had only just set.’
‘Given the season, it must have been seven or a little later,’ Duca said to Carrua. ‘The girl walked around for more than an hour before making up her mind, and in the meantime she could have spent forty thousand lire. Where and how I can’t imagine, because Metanopoli isn’t bursting with shops like the Via Montenapoleone.’
‘She may have given them to someone,’ Carrua said, ‘or someone may have taken them, that’s what you’re trying to say.’
They didn’t understand. Not even your closest and dearest friends always understand you. ‘I’m not trying to say anything. Apart from one thing: that I can’t deal with this young man. I don’t like problems any more, and this is one big problem. Don’t tell me you found me a good job and I don’t want to do it, you have to realise that I can’t afford to get mixed up in anything like this, it’d ruin me. After already being sentenced for homicide with extenuating circumstances, all I need is to be suspected of having links with the world of call girls and orgies and I’d really be messed up.’
‘You’re right,’ Carrua said gently.
‘I just wanted to show you that it isn’t bad will,’ Duca said. ‘This business is for you now.’
‘I’ll get right on it.’ Carrua picked up the phone. ‘Send me Mascaranti.’
‘I’m going to look for another job,’ Duca said. ‘Please get hold of Engineer Auseri, tell him whatever you want and give him back his son. Tell him he’s not to be left alone.’ He looked towards the window. ‘I’m so sorry, Davide.’